[PLUG] Hardware recommendations

[Rich Shepard]

The Asus motherboard that has sat here for a few years seems to be
defective. It will not boot directly from the EFI /dev/sda1/. It will if I
manually enter the BIOS settings and select that drive as the boot source.
Otherwise, it shows that it loaded the Slackware-14.2/x86_64 vmlinuz then it
freezes.

Last week after getting the drives sorted out it did -- once -- reboot
successfully, but not since then.

I downloaded the Asus BIOS firmware version 2016-08-05, put it (unzipped,
of course) on a USB flash drive, and followed the Asus instructions for
upgrading the BIOS that way. Got to the point where the system saw the flash
drive but would not let me access the file info for that drive.

Unless someone here has ideas for me to try I think that I need to spend
the money to buy a new systemboard, CPU, and memory. I prefer AMD processors
and the Razen5 series gets good reviews. I'm not a gamer so I don't think I
need hardware for that, but I want an 8-core CPU for spatial and statistical
analyses of large scientific data sets. Asus seems to make good motherboard
(but for mine).

I am open to suggestions for replacements for this current system that
would be sufficiently new and capable of handling multi-threaded processes.
If it uses DDR3 RAM that would be a bonus since I just bought an additional
8G (16G total); if DDR4 is the way to go so be it.

TIA,

Rich

[Rich Shepard]

I also need to upgrade. One thing I need is high performance USB.

Pete,

The case I have has more USB3 ports than USB2 ports. I assume they're the
original USB3. I also have a 7-port USB3 hub; plug in a flash drive and it
connects to one of the front panel USB3 ports.

So if you're looking for a high performance system let's get together.

I'm thinking that if I am going to spend $$$ I might as well get something
near today's top end. Newegg has an AMD RYZEN 7 2700 8-Core 3.2 GHz (4.1 GHz
Max Boost) Socket AM4 65W YD2700BBAFBOX Desktop Processor on sale through
tomorrow for $280
<https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113498&cm_re=AMD_Razen7_CPU-_-19-113-498-_-Product?>.
The CPU comes with a cooler that has color control. Woopie-do. How one can
see the cooler color in a closed case beats me. Seems that gamers like
see-through cases with colors that make them look like 1950 jukeboxes.

On that same page they show both Asus and MSI motherboards (with USB3.1),
the former at $164 and the latter at $120. I've installed linux on both
brands so I have no idea if the Asus is worth the extra cost for our needs.
16G RAM is another $185.

I imagine the board will fit the case I have and the power supply is at
least 65W.

If we go this way we can get together to assemble them. I can probably
sell my DDR3 RAM and the CPU for reasonable prices.

Rich

[John Jason Jordan]

On Sun, 9 Sep 2018 10:39:58 -0700 (PDT)

Post by Rich Shepard
The Asus motherboard that has sat here for a few years seems to be
defective.

I recently put together a new desktop with an AsRock Z270 Taichi. One
of the things that I was looking for was USB 3.1 Gen 2 connectors, and
this was one of the few boards that offered that at the time. Note that
at this time I have no devices that can take advantage of the double
speed of Gen 2 over Gen 1, but I wanted it for future devices that I
will probably buy someday. It's an Intel board, so you probably don't
want to consider it, but I thought I'd mention it anyway. At the time I
researched on the net whether AMD or Intel CPUs had the best deal for
the money, and I settled on Intel. My high-end computing involves
encoding movies, which takes a significant amount of CPU power.

We assembled it at the Clinic, which was kind of fun. I might have been
able to do it myself, but I would have had a lot of questions and it
was great having smart people around.

We discovered a problem - the video output from the board is HDMI and
there were no such monitors at Free Geek, except for the big screen
mounted on the wall in the room we use. Using that screen we got it
sort of booting, but when I got it home I discovered that my old
1920x1080 Asus monitor needed input from a computer before it could be
switched to HDMI, and at the Clinic we had gutted my old computer, so I
had nothing that would work. It took me hours of poking before I
finally got it working.

I thought I'd mention these things so you will have a couple more
things to consider while shopping.

[Rich Shepard]

At the time I researched on the net whether AMD or Intel CPUs had the best
deal for the money, and I settled on Intel. My high-end computing involves
encoding movies, which takes a significant amount of CPU power.

John,

My research on AMD vs Intel said that except for the top of the line CPUs
AMDs are less costly for equivalent structure and speed.

And, I've had excellent service from AMD processors over the years.

Regards,

Rich

[Rich Shepard]

I'd suggest you take the coin cell out and check its voltage. If
it's low ( <2v) put in a new battery.

Jim,

Sigh. I thought this was the solution. It's not; there's more going on.

After replacing the CMOS battery I set the boot device order as optical
drive -> 'slackware' (i.e., the SSD with the UEFI partition and slackware
installed). Then tried upgrading the BIOS firmware. That still did not work.
Remembering that Ben wrote that the Asus board doesn't recognize a drive
without bootable media I changed the boot sequence back to 'slackware' ->
optical drive.

Now, when rebooted it still hangs at the kernel vmlinuz loaded.

Thanks for the idea!

Rich

[Bill Barry]

Post by Rich Shepard

I'd suggest you take the coin cell out and check its voltage. If
it's low ( <2v) put in a new battery.

Jim,
Sigh. I thought this was the solution. It's not; there's more going on.
After replacing the CMOS battery I set the boot device order as optical
drive -> 'slackware' (i.e., the SSD with the UEFI partition and slackware
installed). Then tried upgrading the BIOS firmware. That still did not work.
Remembering that Ben wrote that the Asus board doesn't recognize a drive
without bootable media I changed the boot sequence back to 'slackware' ->
optical drive.
Now, when rebooted it still hangs at the kernel vmlinuz loaded.
Thanks for the idea!
Rich

Will it but from a live CD?

Bill

Post by Rich Shepard
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[Rich Shepard]

Post by Bill Barry
Will it but from a live CD?

Bill,

It will boot from the Slackware distribution DVD, and from the installed
files only if I enter the BIOS setup during boot and explicitly point to the
bootable drive. That drive is set to be the one to use in two places in the
BIOS: main page and advanced setup, but ... it still needs manual
manipulation each time. That's not right.

Regards,

Rich

[Galen Seitz]

Post by Bill Barry
Will it but from a live CD?

Bill,
  It will boot from the Slackware distribution DVD, and from the installed
files only if I enter the BIOS setup during boot and explicitly point to the
bootable drive. That drive is set to be the one to use in two places in the
BIOS: main page and advanced setup, but ... it still needs manual
manipulation each time. That's not right.

I obviously don't know the details of your setup, but when I did a
CentOS upgrade (6 to 7) at the beginning of the year, I was reminded
that dropping a UEFI-based disk into a new machine requires telling the
UEFI firmware(aka the BIOS) where to find the boot image. This may not
be your problem, but you should confirm that your UEFI firmware has the
correct boot path.


galen

[Rich Shepard]

I obviously don't know the details of your setup, but when I did a CentOS
upgrade (6 to 7) at the beginning of the year, I was reminded that
dropping a UEFI-based disk into a new machine requires telling the UEFI
firmware(aka the BIOS) where to find the boot image. This may not be your
problem, but you should confirm that your UEFI firmware has the correct
boot path.

galen,

It does. It sees the UEFI/vfat /dev/sda1/ and calls it 'slackwere.'

Regards,

Rich

[Bill Barry]

Post by Rich Shepard

Post by Bill Barry
Will it but from a live CD?

Bill,
It will boot from the Slackware distribution DVD, and from the installed
files only if I enter the BIOS setup during boot and explicitly point to the
bootable drive. That drive is set to be the one to use in two places in the
BIOS: main page and advanced setup, but ... it still needs manual
manipulation each time. That's not right.
Regards,
Rich
Rich,

Does it remember any configuration setting? I.e. if you change some random
BIOS setting, turn it off, turn it on and go back to the BIOS and see if
that is still set. If no memory and not a battery problem then there is
some bad connection from the battery to the motherboard, or maybe you left
the reset jumper on the motherboard in the wrong position.

[Rich Shepard]

Post by Bill Barry
Does it remember any configuration setting? I.e. if you change some random
BIOS setting, turn it off, turn it on and go back to the BIOS and see if
that is still set. If no memory and not a battery problem then there is
some bad connection from the battery to the motherboard, or maybe you left
the reset jumper on the motherboard in the wrong position.

Bill,

With the new battery installed I set time and date, specified the boot
device and tried booting. That failed. When I restarted the system and
entered the BIOS settings they were as set.

The reset jumper was not installed. I have not used a CMOS reset jumper on
any system I've built. Haven't understood why I would want to.

Seems likely that the motherboard has a flaw somewhere.

Thanks very much for your ideas,

Rich

[Jim Garrison]

  The reset jumper was not installed. I have not used a CMOS reset
jumper on
any system I've built. Haven't understood why I would want to.

This might just be the one time you NEED a CMOS reset jumper.

Before giving up I'd try that.

--
Jim Garrison

[Rich Shepard]

Post by Jim Garrison
This might just be the one time you NEED a CMOS reset jumper.
Before giving up I'd try that.

Jim,

Okay. I'll see if the jumper is in the bag with the manual and other bits
and pieces, and will find where it goes.

Thanks,

Rich

[Rich Shepard]

This might just be the one time you NEED a CMOS reset jumper. Before
giving up I'd try that.

Jim,

Yep. This was the catch of the day. The motherboard manual showed me where
the CMOS jumper is located and provided explicit directions: move jumper
from pins 1 and 2 to pins 2 and 3. Wait 5-10 seconds (I waited 10). Put
jumper back on pins 1 and 2. Boot system into the BIOS setup and reset
system date/time.

Sure enough, after doing that the system _paused_ at the screen where it
had stalled then went on to boot. Replacing a dead CMOS battery was a new
experience for me so clearing the CMOS real-time clock was required. Nothing
other than the date and time were changed in the BIOS settings.

Another new experience where I could not use prior knowledge to fix the
problem.

Thanks very much,

Rich

[Dave Lien - W7DAL]

Good work Jim. Having built up many computers over the decades I watched
this thread with interest.

-Dave

This might just be the one time you NEED a CMOS reset jumper. Before
giving up I'd try that.

Jim,
  Yep. This was the catch of the day. The motherboard manual showed me
where
the CMOS jumper is located and provided explicit directions: move jumper
from pins 1 and 2 to pins 2 and 3. Wait 5-10 seconds (I waited 10). Put
jumper back on pins 1 and 2. Boot system into the BIOS setup and reset
system date/time.
  Sure enough, after doing that the system _paused_ at the screen
where it
had stalled then went on to boot. Replacing a dead CMOS battery was a new
experience for me so clearing the CMOS real-time clock was required. Nothing
other than the date and time were changed in the BIOS settings.
  Another new experience where I could not use prior knowledge to fix the
problem.
Thanks very much,
Rich
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[Jim Garrison]

Post by Dave Lien - W7DAL
Good work Jim. Having built up many computers over the decades I watched
this thread with interest.

Thanks. I built my first PC in 1988 and have never bought a
pre-built machine. It's nice to build exactly what I want
and spend my budget to maximize value for my needs.

[Jim Garrison]

  Yep. This was the catch of the day. The motherboard manual showed me
where
the CMOS jumper is located and provided explicit directions: move jumper
from pins 1 and 2 to pins 2 and 3. Wait 5-10 seconds (I waited 10). Put
jumper back on pins 1 and 2. Boot system into the BIOS setup and reset
system date/time.
  Sure enough, after doing that the system _paused_ at the screen where it
had stalled then went on to boot. Replacing a dead CMOS battery was a new
experience for me so clearing the CMOS real-time clock was required. Nothing
other than the date and time were changed in the BIOS settings.

Clearly something in CMOS got wonky (technical term for "corrupted" :-)

There's a capacitor in the circuit that keeps the CMOS powered for a
short time (minutes) so you don't lose the clock and custom settings
when you replace the battery. The jumper shorts the capacitor and
battery across a resistor to completely remove power from the CMOS and
force it back to factory defaults.

  Another new experience where I could not use prior knowledge to fix the
problem.

--
Jim Garrison
***@acm.org

[Rich Shepard]

Post by Jim Garrison
Clearly something in CMOS got wonky (technical term for "corrupted" :-)

In the science world we refer to that as FUBAR.

Rich